When the beach-ball-shaped Pathfinder spacecraft bounces to a stop on the surface of an ancient flood plain on Mars this Friday, the mission will be aided by the observations of hundreds of backyard astronomers. By uploading images of changing weather patterns on the planet to an archive on the Web, amateur stargazers are assisting NASA in an innovative program called MarsWatch.
By providing mission scientists with a constantly updated feed of visual data about evolving weather conditions on Mars, MarsWatch has been "invaluable" to the mission, Pathfinder project scientist Matthew Golombek told Wired News. The MarsWatch program has also been a "huge success" as educational outreach for the agency, he says.
The effort to nurture a cooperative network of amateur stargazers and professional astronomers began more than 30 years ago, says MarsWatch coordinator Jim Bell of the Center for Radiophysics and Space Research at Cornell University. "It all started with Chick Capen at the Lowell Observatory, who encouraged amateur astronomers to send one another drawings and photos through the mail," says Bell, explaining that Capen "wanted to bump them above the level of dabbler, to the level of amateur scientist." (Bell adds that "there are a lot of snobs in professional astronomy, and Chick was not one of them.")
The Web, which allows participants to share images and observations minute-by-minute, has "quadrupled" the effectiveness of the MarsWatch program, Bell observes. "Before the Web, someone would report a big dust storm on the planet to one of the amateur groups, who would publish a report in their newsletter a month later, when all the conditions would be completely different" Bell says.
Now, NASA scientists can cross-reference images from hobbyists in Japan, Sweden, and Kazakhstan with data from the Hubble Space Telescope, and get a more accurate, real-time overview of conditions that could affect the success of the mission, Bell claims.
Three days ago, Hubble transmitted an image of an enormous dust storm brewing in the Vallis Marinaris - 1000 kilometers from the Pathfinder landing site at Ares Vallis, says Bell. Dust clouds could affect entry into the Martian atmosphere and use of the craft's solar power supply, and Hubble was only able to capture a single photo of the threatening tempest. A stream of images from the MarsWatch site, and other data, assured project scientists that Pathfinder is not in danger, says Golombek.
Even if the data from MarsWatch has no effect on the trajectory of the 5-meter-wide spacecraft, says Bell, the program will result in a detailed archive of the conditions leading up to the landing.
MarsWatch is a boon for the mission, according to Golombek, because "when you're flinging a $250 million spacecraft up there, you need all the environmental information you can get." The current position of Mars in the sky - in "opposition" - has granted amateur astronomers ideal conditions to observe and photograph planetary conditions before uploading them to the MarsWatch site, Golombek says.
The photographs that Golombek is most interested in, of course, are the ones that Pathfinder will transmit from the surface of Ares Vallis if all goes well on Friday. "I've built up a mental picture from all this data," Golombek says. "I'm tremendously excited to see how far we got it right."
